Weekly Deck Review – Xixo’s Anti-Hunter Shaman

I’m a Season 3 Legend player and a huge Hearthstone fanatic. I’ve had a lot of success running a variant of Ek0p’s Savage Roar Druid and I designed its Season 5 updated version (you can find it here).

This week I want to talk about Xixo’s new anti-hunter Shaman deck, with which this guy won his second Liquidhearth Open tournament recently. He’s also been the first player to reach legend in Season 1, Season 2, Season 3 and Season 5.

The Deck

Despite being an anti-hunter deck, I have to say that this deck performs really well against most decks: it might succumb to early aggression when facing decks like zoo (as shown in the video of my second match below) but it’s great against midrange and control decks, and it can still pull out victories against aggro decks.

The deck itself falls into the midrange archetype: it has some nice early play, thanks to drops like undertaker, haunted-creeper and flametongue-totem, it is consistent during mid-game, thanks to cards like Loatheb, azure-drake and fire-elemental, and it has strong removals to get rid of pesky minions like Savannah-highmane or Cairne-bloodhoof.

The lack of late-game minions such as Ragnaros or Alexstrasza clearly indicates that this deck gives its best during the early to mid-game, but thanks to its strong removals it can outlast control decks, too.

The deck general strategy is to play very sticky minions during the early game, such as haunted-creeper and harvest-golem, buff them with flamtongue-totem or defender-of-argus, and keep the pressure on your opponent, forcing him to waste removals on weak minions and to make bad trades.

The deck was clearly designed to counter the hunter-heavy meta that affects the ladder currently , especially at lower ranks (Harrison-jones can really save your day against a secret-heavy hunter).

Although Shaman is generally an unfavorable matchup against hunter, this particular deck has the right answers to the most common hunter cards that are played at the moment, and it counters Rexxar effectively.

If you want more detailed information on how to beat hunters with this deck, you can check out Xixo’s strategy and card choices here.

Videos

I have recorded three matches in which I show how Xixo’s deck performs against various foes. You can check them out at the top of the article if you want to see the deck in action!

Conclusion

I think Xixo’s anti-hunter Shaman is a great all-around deck that has virtually no bad matchups, except for the occasional aggro decks you can encounter at lower ranks (and it’s not too bad against them, either). The deck can be used to climb the ladder with no fear of hunters or warriors, thanks to its great early play and thanks to its hard removals (and Harrison-jones).

If you like Shaman, this is definitely the right moment to pick it up and give those hunters a good ass-kicking!

If you guys have any suggestions, tips, or questions, feel free to write in the comments section below.

Also, if you would like me to review a deck that is particularly dear to you at the moment, link it to me and I will check it out.

You can also contact me any time in-game : my battletag is Giordy#2566.